Follow Peace and Holiness with All
Hebrews 12:14
When we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit, we are brought into submission to God the Father by being brought to believe and obey God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been made to rejoice that the glory belongs to Christ to bring the gospel to his elect, to send forth the Spirit, to purge the conscious from the dead works by which we thought we could make ourselves and others holy. The peaceable fruit yielded by the Lord’s chastening is that he turns his children from our former vain way and makes us partakers of his holiness. Though we often grow weary, the Spirit in us makes us willing so that as much as in us is we endeavor to follow peace with all and to suffer quietly when others reject the truth that by Christ's one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. As he keeps us by his power, we grow to know more and more by experience, that if any sinner is made a partaker of his holiness, and kept, so as to be presented without spot to God, it will be because the glory belongs to Christ, not us, to sanctify his children in their hearts by the Spirit through the washing of the water by the word. Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. (1 Peter 1: 13-16).